Product of Canada

Did you know that Canada grows some fine pineapples? Or that we have many thriving chocolate plantations? If you’re a grocery label reader, it might be easy to assume that all of those prepared products labelled “product of Canada” were grown here. But the current law is a little bit slippery.

Current rules state that a label can say “Made in Canada” or “Product of Canada” if 51 percent of the production costs are Canadian and the last substantial transformation of the product took place in Canada.

So cocoa beans shipped to Canada to be made into chocolate bars here go to the stores with a “product of Canada” label, even though they came from somewhere else.

The new standards require that any label claiming a food product is a “Product of Canada” necessarily needs to have all or virtually all of its contents be Canadian. That includes ingredients, the processing and the labour used to make the product; an exception has been made for some foreign content to be included in a Canadian product and labelled as such if minor additives or spices are not available in Canada.

As consumers become more aware of movements to eat locally-grown food, we put our trust in those “product of Canada” labels. We want local first, and then Canadian second. But much of what we were buying was made from imported items that were simply processed here, and we had no way of knowing if these products were grown according to Canadian health and safety guidelines. The new laws will make it clear to consumers just where their food is coming from.

No word on exactly when the labelling changes will take place, but expect plenty of whining from the processed foods sector, both because of the disadvantage it will create for them on store shelves and also because of the cost of redesigning labels, which have to be done in both English and French.